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Thomaston at a crossroads With fewer students, town considers closing one of its schools BY ALEC JOHNSON REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

THOMASTON — Fifth-grade students at Thomaston Center School on Friday took turns reading poems they had written to their classmates. A teacher asked the children to speak loud enough for everyone to hear in the relatively spacious classroom.

There are 16 students in the class, and 256 in the entire building, a white-columned, brick structure built in 1938 as Thomaston High School. Its spacious classrooms and rambling, locker-lined hallways, and a 1958 addition still called "the new wing," speak to a time when taller students, and many more of them, walked the halls.

Next year, the district projects 20 fewer students in the school's fourth through sixth grades.

The student population is declining so steadily that talks are under way this budget season on a question nobody in the district particularly wants to answer: Should one of Thomaston's schools close?

Thomaston, with a population of 7,975 in the 2010 census, is a combination of Waterbury suburb and Litchfield County small town. It is not the only municipality to struggle with declining school enrollment. Elementary school districts in neighboring Colebook and Norfolk are discussing a merger, with not enough students between them to make keeping both buildings financially prudent. Region 1 last week cut four teachers from Housatonic Valley Regional High School, citing a drop in enrollment that's seen in all six of the region's Northwest Corner member towns. Dropping student numbers have been reported in Region 12, Region 14, Region 15 — and the consequences are showing in discussions about staff, programs and facilities.

"This is the same discussion in every single town," said Nancy O'Dea-Wyrick, business manager for Thomaston School District.

In Thomaston, those 20 fewer students in fourth to sixth grade next year mean an entire class gone. Declining birth rates in town keep the trend downward. O'Dea-Wyrick said a decade ago, between 80 and 90 babies were born to Thomaston parents every year. That has since dropped to between 50 and 65 babies annually.

The Board of Education, at the urging of the Board of Finance, which sets the town budgets and is the custodian of taxpayer dollars, is faced with a decision about whether Thomaston Center or Black Rock Elementary, across town on Branch Road, should close.

The move would put all kindergarten through grade six students under one roof.

The district enrolls 1,004 this year, and that number is projected to drop to 968 next year and to 751 by 2016, according to O'Dea-Wyrick's projections.

BLACK ROCK SCHOOL, now pre-kindergarten through grade three, has 310 students, and the high school, which houses grades seven through 12, has 438 students.

Last year the finance board, worried by the enrollment projections, asked school officials to start pondering the existence of their three schools during a school budget conversation. Last week the board pressed harder, when faced with a decision about whether and how to fund $3.9 million in needed repairs to the roofs of all three schools, which are in various stages of disrepair.

The roofs will be repaired regardless, as there is no plan on what would happen to whichever school closes, and its future use or sale would be hampered by a bad or leaking roof. But the finance board believes that eliminating a building is the wise long-term choice.

"When we talked consolidation we meant close a school," said Kristin L. Mosimann, a board of finance member. "We feel there is no other way to do it to save substantial amounts of money."

Superintendent Lynda J. Mitchell said she and her administrative staff have been researching options to answer the finance board's questions. "We're working on it every day," she said.

Mitchell said she met briefly with the Plymouth and Litchfield school districts to talk about possible regionalization, but no decisions or plans were laid. "We slowed down the process to get a better direction," she said. "We began a process to research and gather data. We should continue that to completion."

Lucy Santopietro, Board of Education chairwoman, said thought the student population is declining — it was 1,263 in 2007 — there are still too many students to eliminate a school building without costly additions to make more space.

Mitchell's proposed budget for next school year accounts for one fewer classroom teacher at both Center and Black Rock schools. According to the budget the total cost of Black Rock this year, including salaries, was $2,312,289. At Center School that figure was $1,893,110. The overall budget this year is $14,337,660. It is not immediately clear what savings could be realized, but O'Dea-Wyrick said there likely could be reductions to custodial staffs, administrators and cafeteria workers, as they are duplicated in the multiple schools. According to online staff directories there are 27 staff at Black Rock and 38 staff at Center School.

Black Rock Elementary School was built in 1954 and had additions built in 1956, 1968 and 1998. The final addition, which cost $6.53 million, followed a 1995 study that found then the town's schools were "overcrowded in some cases, underused in others, and overall a poor investment in the community's resources," according to articles in the Republican-American archives.

In 1996 the Board of Education voted to move grades seven and eight from Thomaston Middle School (now Center School) to Thomaston High School.

Currently pre-kindergarten through grade 3 are at Black Rock, grades 4-6 are at Center School and grades 7-12 are at the high school.

O'Dea-Wyrick said it would be faster and easier to close Center School, based on a preliminary scenario.

She said one option would be to move fourth grade to Black Rock School by 2015, leaving fifth and sixth grades at Center School for a year before splitting them up by putting fifth grade at Black Rock and sixth grade at the high school. That would require moving prekindergarten to the high school and could be completed by 2017, she said. O'Dea-Wyrick added that the scenario may not be optimal and no financial impact studies have been done.

WHEN LOOKING AT ELIMINATING A SCHOOL, O'Dea-Wyrick, said there are numerous considerations other than pupils and classrooms. Center School, she said, built originally for high school students, doesn't have appropriate bathrooms with toilets low enough to the floor to accommodate young children. It does, however, have a full gym and a recently refurbished auditorium, both of which are lacking at Black Rock.

Parking is an issue at both schools she said and there is no playground, and really nowhere to install one, at Center School. "Each school has something that is a positive," said O'Dea-Wyrick. "The biggest challenge we have at both schools is they needed more land."

The Board of Education has scheduled a special meeting for 7 p.m. Monday in the Lena Morton Art Gallery at Town Hall to discuss consolidation options and chart a course, according to a published agenda.

"Everybody is weighing with different ideas and opinions and the more ideas we get the more likely we are to come up with the best solution for Thomaston," Mitchell said.

" there are no jobs for young people in Conn..and the only ones that have been around for the past 25 years since the income tax are in govt or education. Nobody will move here..and the people here wont take the chance on having kids. "

" A 75 year old school is one rainstorm away from a deteriorating roof, asbestos problems and all that goes with it. Too bad. Must have been a nice neighborhood school in the 50's.@alan, there are jobs in ct. Many go unfilled due to under qualified "candidates" Maybe if recent grads and parents didn't feel the entitlement that comes with living in CT, they'd be working, not complaining. "

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